Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum
56
Adam
39
Adventures of Power
66
Afterschool
73
Amreeka
49
Antichrist
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The
71
Big Fan
65
Black Dynamite
76
Bliss
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star
76
Broken Embraces
70
Bronson
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
60
Collapse
82
Cove, The
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The
53
Dare
50
Defamation
67
Departures
70
Earth Days
85
Education, An
55
Endgame
88
Fantastic Mr. Fox
31
Fix
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Horse Boy, The
74
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
43
Little Traitor, The
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
46
Love Hurts
84
Maid, The
45
Mammoth
75
Messenger, The
55
Missing Person, The
59
More Than a Game
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
48
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
26
Oh My God
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Red Cliff
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
65
Skin
41
Splinterheads
42
Staten Island
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
58
Storm
82
Sun, The
49
Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73
That Evening Sun
61
Trucker
49
Turning Green
83
U2 3D
45
Uncertainty
67
Visual Acoustics
32
War on Kids
67
Way We Get By, The
65
Wedding Song, The
xx
White on Rice
59
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74
Woman in Berlin, A
43
Women in Trouble
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Amelia
EMAILPRINTFox Searchlight Pictures
Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 34 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 15 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by:
Ronald Bass
Anna Hamilton Phelan
Directed by: Mira Nair
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 23, 2009
Running Time: 111 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG for some sensuality, language, thematic elements and smoking
Starring Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, and Mia Wasikowska
After becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, Amelia was thrust into a new role as America's sweetheart - the legendary "goddess of light," known for her bold, larger-than-life charisma. Yet, even with her global fame solidified, her belief in flirting with danger and standing up as her own, outspoken woman never changed. She was an inspiration to people everywhere, from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to the men closest to her heart: her husband, promoter and publishing magnate George P. Putnam, and her long time friend and lover, pilot Gene Vidal. In the summer of 1937, Amelia set off on her most daunting mission yet: a solo flight around the world that she and George both anxiously foresaw as destined, whatever the outcome, to become one of the most talked-about journeys in history. (Fox Searchlight)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Monsoon Wedding New York, I Love You Salaam Bombay! (re-release) The Namesake Vanity Fair
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
Most of all, Earhart wanted to be able to fly free as a bird above the clouds, and director Nair and star Swank make her quest not only understandable but truly impressive.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Matthew Sorrento
When this actor (Swank) steps into the right role, she wears and inspires it like Denzel Washington.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
A perfectly sound biopic, well directed and acted, about an admirable woman. It confirmed for me Earhart's courage -- not only in flying, but in insisting on living her life outside the conventions of her time for well-behaved females. The next generation of American women grew up in her slipstream.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Swank is no mere impersonator. Her Amelia, like Maggie in "Million Dollar Baby," is unwavering in her gaze, ambition, and drive... In Nair's evocatively art-directed (and sensationally costumed) film, Earhart comes alive.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Inside Amelia is a sharp idea struggling to get out: How does a woman marketed to the public as a star turn herself back into a human being? And at what cost?
Read Full Review >St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams
The actress and the aviatrix are a match made in heaven, but surrounding the soaring performance is a movie that's mostly earthbound.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
This movie was made to be shown to junior high history classes, not audiences in a movie theater.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
In an ironic twist, Mira Nair's big-hearted yet by-the-numbers biopic of Amelia Earhart never -- unlike the famous aviatrix -- takes chances.
Read Full Review >Empire Angie Errigo
Swank’s moving performance, the period dressing and beautiful planes all appeal, but dramatically it doesn’t really soar.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
A frustratingly old-school, Hollywood-style, inspirational biopic about Amelia Earhart that doesn't trust a viewer's independent assessment of the famous woman pictured on the screen.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Distressingly ordinary for such an extraordinary subject.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Amelia is the Mack truck of flight. Heavy and lumbering, it delivers the goods, but there's not an ounce of magic in the thing.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The film's basic material, that is the history, is not without interest. And it must be admitted that every so often - for about 10 seconds every 10 minutes - we get a hint of the movie they wanted to make and hoped they were making: One about the thrill of early aviation and the promise of a young century.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Perhaps Nair believes that heroism in our tabloid era has become degraded. If so, she overcorrected. Amelia is so pure in heart that it slides right off the screen.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
It's enough to make you wish someone would make a movie about her.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
Amelia is handsome yet predictable and high-minded--not a dud, exactly, but too proper, too reserved for its swaggering subject.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
Most devastating to the film’s effectiveness is its inability to convey that one essential to the story of Amelia Earhart: the tangible pleasures of flying.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Amelia is a stunted epic, an ambitious and handsome-looking picture that tells its story in the dullest, most confusing way possible.
Read Full Review >Time Out New York Keith Uhlich
There’s nothing more boring than a life embalmed with halfhearted Hollywood bombast, which only makes the film’s fleeting pleasures stand out all the more.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey
So a pioneering feminist in the hands of a feminist filmmaker should have been a perfect match. But like her subject, the filmmaker gets lost in the clouds.
Read Full Review >NPR Bob Mondello
The result is verisimilitude without engagement -- a risk-taker's story told entirely without narrative risk -- and a movie that consequently never takes flight.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
There's so much pluck and gumption on the screen you can smell it. Flesh and blood? Not so much.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
It’s all so glancing and superficial that the movie doesn’t seem to have a present tense. It goes by like coming attractions. It is, however, a treasury of bad biopic dialogue.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Nick Pinkerton
Drawn from two Earhart bios, Mira Nair’s dull hagiography comes in about 111 minutes too long.
Read Full Review >Variety Justin Chang
What rankles most about Amelia is the timidity and lack of imagination with which Nair approaches one of America's most exceptional and intriguing celebrity life stories.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
With any luck this biopic of Amelia Earhart will also vanish without a trace. Hilary Swank is sorely miscast as the legendary aviator.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Sam Adams
Considering its focus on a pioneering, rule-breaking icon, the film’s utter lack of personality isn’t just a failure. It’s close to an insult.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Better luck trying to find out what truly happened to the real Earhart than trying to diagnose all that's wrong with this hapless film.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
Tis embalmed drama is a ghost from the '80s, a decade that regularly produced surprise-free, caramelized biopics. The airless Amelia is missing practically everything.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Alas, excesses of any pleasurable kind are absent from this exasperatingly dull production.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.4 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Chad S. gave it a3:
Her plane is slow. Amelia Earhart's Lockheed L-10 Elektra doesn't zip in the sky like the crates flown by test pilots in other aviation-heavy films such as Tony Scott's "Top Gun" and Phillip Kaufman's "The Right Stuff". The plane's relative lack of speed doesn't translate well to the screen, but this non-dramatic handicap could easily have been counterbalanced through a clearly delineated rendering of how air travel was far from routine during this era, in which each flight came fraught with the possibility of a crash. To set the stage of Earhart's crowning achievement(her solo flight across the Atlantic), "Amelia" should show, not just tell, about the unsuccessful attempts made by other female aviators, which ended in death. There's not enough midair tension to help illustrate historicity's dual nature of Earhart's piloting career, which ideally would have displayed her heroism, in simultaniety with evidence that backed the claims of her piloting contemporaries who disputed her competence. Since Earhart's professional accomplishments come off as surprisingly dull, the aviatrix's personal life; her marriage to G.P. Putnam(Richard Gere) and affair with Gene Vidal(Ewan McGregor), comes dangerously close to defining her. The sweeping musical score sweeps all the daredevil spirit out of her. It's a soundtrack better suited for a swoony, romantic woman of her times, not an iconoclast with steely ambition. The music turns Amelia into something she probably never was: soft. Childless throughout her marriage to the famed book publisher, the film, perhaps invents a maternal side for the pilot, who is exceedingly nice and motherly to Gene's son. The music reduces this trailblazing woman, as if "Amelia" was about the first stewardess to fly across the Atlantic.
Winston Lin gave it a10:
Despite the reviews, Hilary Swank is STILL on my Oscar-watch.
Hank W. gave it a10:
Hillary Swank is magnificent in anything she is in. This is a biopic and it plays like one. Not every movie has to be explosive and action packed. Some movies strive for authenticity. So, if you are a Transformers fan, this is not for you but if you like movies that are intelligent and well acted, this might be the one you have been waiting for.
R. L. gave it a7:
I've seen Biopic's on allot of famous and infamous people of the 20th century, Public Enemies(John Dillinger), Aviator(Howard Hughes), Schindler's List(Oskar Schindler), Iron jawed Angel(Alice Paul). But this film, this film has to take the cake as one of the best I've seen yet. Mira Nair's "Amelia" is a breathtaking and exploitative look into the life and achievement's of one of the greatest women of the 20th century, brings full center Amelia Earhart's story form beginning to end and it shows you the women she was underneath, It's almost thought provoking how you see the sequence of event's unfold in front of you how you. How you look at things trough her eyes and see the world as she see's it. It's astounding, mesmerizing, Brilliant and seamlessly woven into one brilliant film. All in all this is one movie you don't want to miss and it is one you need to experience to believe. Hilary Swank(Who isn't Oscar worthy, but does great here.) Plays the great aviatrix herself and she does it with such grace, style and humbleness that it is fantastic to watch her on screen and to see what she'll do next to define the odds as Earhart. Richard Gere(Who is also fantastic here.) plays Earhart's husband George Putnam with such cunning and sympathy that at times you don't know what to think of him. But none the less the cats holds up very nicely in this handsomely mounted film. Amelia is not as great as Public Enemies or Aviator, but it does have a great sense of moral rights and a big heart to fill up some of the holes in the films plot. But it is a great film to watch Swank work and show how(yet again.) that Women can do just as much as men can do. It's a truly compelling and emotional film that I know if your forgiving and kind it will deliver a great movie experience.
Bill Z. gave it a7:
I saw the film on its opening night and found a very small audience, mostly made up of seniors who I presume at least know the background to the story. Negative reviews have crippled the film and will likely result in its early demise at the boxoffice. Like most critical reviews of Amelia, reviewers have "dogpiled" on without a clear indication of why the film failed. Amelia is not an epic nor is it the complete failure that has been described in numerous publications. The standard format of a Hollywood biopic is what many reviewers have disdainfully denigrated. Recounting a life with factual rather than fanciful or unsubstantiated accounts, has doomed the film in many reviews. The mystique and mystery of her life is difficult to distill in a film, but judging by the historians and researchers that have chronicled the Earhart saga, Amelia provides an authentic and authoritative depiction of the last decade of her life. What was missing is the understanding by reputedly astute observers of the iconic status of a feminist, daring adventurer and one of the first of the international celebrities of Aviation's Golden Age. Amelia recreates the period faithfully and despite the slice-and-dice studio editing that left key sequences on the cutting room floor (Virginia Madsen's role as George P. Putnam's wife was entirely eliminated), provides the viewer with a glimpse into Amelia Earhart that most modern audiences would not wholly appreciate, yet would be evocative of the most famous aviatrix of all time.
William W. gave it a5:
Acting was excellent .It was uncanny how much Swank and Amelia looked alike.The musical score was haunting and beautiful.
